Ambalika Tag

Read Parts 1 and 2. After trying to force-fit Draupadi into the feminist mould, Nilanjana Roy sets her sights on Amba, Ambika and Ambalika in yet another extremely revealing paragraph. Amba is, again, silenced in popular discussion, and yet her story remains both remarkable and disquieting — the woman who will even become a man in order to wreak revenge on the man who first abducts and then rejects her. There is nothing easy about her story, as anyone who has tried to rewrite the Mahabharata knows; or about theRead More

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Several months have passed since I published anything on the venerable Bhartruhari. In this installment, I present one of my all-time favourites from Neeti Shataka. Nindantu neeti nipunah yadi vaa stunvantu | Lakshmiih samaavishatu gacchatu vaa yatheshtam || Adya eva

Most Indian regional languages use Tattva Shastra as an equivalent of Philosophy. The word Philosophy–meaning love(r) of knowledge or wisdom–is quite inadequate to define or explain the full import of Tattva Shastra. One of the fundamental aphorisms that embodies the

Read Field Notes 1 on Ellora for a backgrounder. The Ajanta Caves The well-known story of how John Smith, a British officer belonging to the Madras army regiment, (re)discovered Ajanta caves doesn’t bear repitition. However, it suffices to say that

Gautam Sen’s scathing piece in the Pioneer, reproduced in full because Pioneer’s links don’t work the next day. Dire and unnerving as the piece is, it is another wake up call, one among the thousands that we continue to ignore

This was published today in the Pioneer. Comments/criticism welcome as always. Preserving national identity As long as the Indian collective consciousness preserved the primacy of Vedic national unity, India could be invaded but not broken. And it is to this

The Acorn quotes Rajesh Kochhar, an astrophysicist who wrote a book back in 1999, on the Vedic people. This post is inspired from the excerpt at the Acorn’s blog, where Rajesh Kochhar derives several conclusions from a few Rg Vedic

So the Ramajanmabhoomi-Babri Masjid verdict has been postponed and it’s time yet again for doing what we’ve been known to do best: push problems as much as you can until they explode as they must. Meanwhile, the attitudes in the secular

In an article that examines some of the recent happenings around the Sethusamudram project, Outlook fleshes out interesting findings worth exploring in detail. The focus of the article is on Karunanidhi’s angry articulations on Lord Rama. (Aside: I think it’s

Many thanks to a reader who brought to my notice M.F. Hussain’s interview with Tehelka. Readers of this blog know my views on Hussain. The interview is interesting because this is the first piece I have read where Hussain gives

A question that repeatedly seems to haunt the Indian mainstream media: how to "balance" Hinduism with Semitic religions? This question assumes importance in issues where the religious aspect assumes great significance. So Sethusamudram is the latest issue, which has been

About two years ago, writing about how Meera Nanda proudly strutted her ignorance, I observed two things at the outset: Perhaps it takes only a Meera Nanda to have the guts to strut her ignorance with such confidence. It took